Summary

As you can see, there are many Web Services already available on the Internet, and more are sure to follow. When building your portals, take advantage of these services as much as possible. There's no sense rebuilding something that's already done, as long as it works. The key is to tie the portal information being brought back to the user's preferences, which is your job to gather. After you've done that, you can easily create useful services for your users without making them wander all over the Internet looking for good information.